


crushing

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, klance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 15:13:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7320337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Thanks,” Lance awkwardly cleared his throat, all too aware of Keith’s unwavering gaze on him, “for staying, I mean.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” a smile slowly spread on Keith’s face. “We’re a team, after all.”</p>
<p>(In which Lance gets homesick and Keith is apparently nocturnal.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	crushing

**Author's Note:**

> Another pointless klance drabble strikes again! Only this time ft. a sad Lance. I just want these boys to be happy and together.

Lance absentmindedly twirled Earth between his fingers, watching the tiny planet spin far faster than nature intended before letting it spiral off his hand completely. It got decently far into the vastness of space before flickering and reappearing back where it had originally been. The simulation didn’t exactly appreciate humans trying to play silly games; it was designed for navigation and more serious applications. But Lance couldn’t sleep, couldn’t get his mind off of so many things. The least he could do was boot up the new A.I. system and play with marble sized, holographic planets, right?

He reached for his home planet again, pinching it between two fingers and studying the tiny representation of Earth. It seemed amazingly accurate, the continents arranged exactly like all the maps he’d memorized at the Garrison. Even the ocean had little, animated waves running across it, little vapors of fake clouds drifting across the surface. And, if he looked closely enough, he could almost pinpoint exactly where his town would be.

A surge of frustration welling up inside of him, Lance rolled the planet into his palm and threw it as hard as he could. The simulation didn’t understand the movement. Without warning, it shut itself down. All the floating stars and planets that had surrounded him flickered out of existence, leaving him in an empty, dark room.

The silence was crushing and he slid to the floor. He leaned against the powered-down crystal of the computer system, drawing his knees up to his chest. His lip was starting to tremble now, wasn’t it? The more he told himself to cut it out, the bigger the lump in his throat seemed to get.

A soft scuffling at the door and the sound of the lock deactivating caused his heart to jump out of his chest. Lance’s body seemed to forego both the fight and flight options, instead opting for freezing as light from the hallway poured into the room. He was already mentally preparing to come up with a barrage of excuses for being up in the middle of the night, half-expecting it to be Allura.

Instead, the silhouette that appeared looked much shorter, and as it drew nearer Lance could make out the distinctly mullety hairstyle. He felt half a second of relief before realizing that this didn’t make the situation any better. He scrambled to his feet, trying to keep his face angled away from the light without looking suspicious.

“Lance…? What’re you doing in here? I knew I heard something,” Keith cautiously stepped into the room, boots practically silent as the door slid shut behind him. Without the light from the hallway pouring in, Lance didn’t feel so exposed anymore.

“I just couldn’t sleep, that’s all. I thought it’d be nice to just check out the castle, explore the rooms and all, the usual stuff,” Lance tried to keep his voice level. He hoped that Keith would accept that answer and make the spontaneous decision to leave. On the other hand, he knew he’d break down entirely if left to his own devices. That crushing loneliness always seemed to come rushing back when he had too much time to think by himself.

Predictably not about to leave without a proper explanation, Keith just hummed quietly. He quietly walked over to join the other boy near the crystal. Instead of activating the system, he leaned across it, face suddenly inches away from Lance’s. The brunette lurched backwards, surprised at the close proximity.

“You’re upset,” Keith pointed out, unfazed by Lance’s indignant squawk of, “hey, personal space!” The dark haired teen actually seemed concerned, his face more serious than when he usually messed around with Lance. Even in the dark, his violet eyes seemed to catch whatever dim light was reflecting off of the crystal.

The lump in Lance’s throat was rapidly starting to return. He wasn’t sure if it was because Keith actually seemed to care, or if his body was just trying to pull a bad prank on him, but either way it was painful. “I’m not…upset,” he barely got out the last word, throat burning, face burning. It was all just embarrassing.

They stood in the dark silently for a long moment before Keith spoke. His voice was unusually quiet, hesitant even.

“Is it your family?”

Hearing it said out loud cut through Lance worse than when he just agonized over it in his head. Sighing, he lowered himself back into a sitting position, looking down at the floor. A second later, he heard Keith shuffle towards him. The red paladin had joined him on the ground.

They sat in silence for a long moment. It felt oddly intimate, sitting inches away from Keith. Lance figured that being in a dark room at two in the morning also changed the dynamic a bit. Although the fact that he’d been caught at such an embarrassingly emotional time probably also had something to do with it.

Unexpectedly, Keith was the first one to break the silence. Lance heard him deeply inhale, turning to look at the other paladin just as he began to speak.

“I really loved my mother. She was the smartest person I ever knew and could always make me laugh. Even when she couldn’t get around well, she was so resourceful,” Lance’s eyes widened as he listened to Keith speak, watching as the other paladin’s fist clenched in his lap. “I miss her a lot. More than anything, really. So…I guess I can understand how you feel sometimes.”

Lance was a fair amount of shocked. He’d never heard Keith talk about his past before. Especially not his family. He was tempted to ask Keith about what happened to his mother – why Keith was referring to her in the past tense - but he didn’t want to push too far. Instead of falling back into painful silence, he decided to talk about his own.

“I love my mother too. I mean, she’s obviously smart and beautiful and the best mom ever and all that. And I miss her too. So much, I…” Lance wanted to hit himself when he started to feel his lip tremble again. “I’ve been a really horrible son. I don’t deserve her. I don’t deserve any of them.” Shit, was his vision already starting to blur?

He heard Keith shift a bit next to him, the dark haired teen’s face a mixture of confused and concerned. “Why do you say that? You’re out here working to save her, to save the galaxy. You’re doing great things. You’re a good person.”

Lance drew his knees up to his chest again, wanting more than anything to just hide his face. It was hard enough to talk with the painful lump in his throat. “She was so worried about me leaving to go to the Garrison. Every time I got on the train to go back she would tell me she didn’t think I’d be safe.”

His eyes were starting to sting as he continued. “The last time I saw her, I told her, I’ll make you so proud, _mamá_. You don’t have to worry, _vuelvo ahora._ I know it was the right decision to come here, but…but she probably thinks I’m dead, or that something horrible happened. I never wanted to make her cry.”

It was hard to hide his sniffling. He could only imagine what Keith thought of him, being pathetic like this. He could feel trickles of something warm run down his cheeks and furiously wiped at his face. His voice dropped to a whisper, embarrassingly rough with tears. “My younger brother and sister used to knock on my door every single night because of bad dreams or the cold. Sometimes I wonder if they still do, just to remember that their big brother left them without saying goodbye.”

Keith had gone completely still as Lance spoke, eyebrows furrowed, hands still clenched. Part of the brunette bitterly reminded him that Keith probably didn’t care, or worse, he was scoffing at Lance for being such a baby. For all he knew, Keith didn’t even have a family, yet here he was listening to someone else cry about theirs being alive.

A warm hand softly brushed against his cheek. He froze, mouth dropping open as Keith quickly pulled away, his fingers wet with Lance’s tears.

“What, never seen such manly tears before?” Lance weakly teased, cheek burning where gentle fingers had grazed it. Keith’s face flushed a little, hand curling back into a fist. “It’s nothing,” he settled back into his original position, shoulder pressed firmly against Lance’s.

They leaned against each other for a long moment before Keith spoke up again.

“Your family. Are there a lot of you?”

Lance couldn’t help but laugh a little at the phrasing, sniffling softly. “Well, that’s one way to put it. I have five siblings and a ton of extended family and cousins. There’s usually at least ten people in our house at once. Try living with that noise level, I guarantee you won’t last a day.” He wiped at his face again with his sleeve.

Keith hummed quietly, a small smile on his face. “I think I could tolerate your family for at least two days. I’m not horrible with kids.”

“Oh, it’s not the kids you have to worry about, they’re all just cute. But one of my older sisters, she’s a real menace. I bet she’d get on your case about your stupid mullet,” Lance grinned as he reached over to gently tug on a curling strand of Keith’s hair. It was surprisingly soft.

Something akin to a pout crossed over Keith’s face. “You’re always calling it a mullet, but I don’t think you’re using that word correctly. Besides, Pidge’s hair is even longer in the back, why don’t you say they have a mullet too?”

“It’s only your hair that frustrates me,” Lance playfully shoved Keith with his shoulder. Keith pushed back, following up with a, “you’re just weird.”

Sometimes it was too easy, Lance thought, to be able to converse with Keith like this. The lump in his throat had slowly dissipated, the silence now comfortable as he leaned against the other paladin. His eyes felt painfully dry, nose still a little runny, but he felt miles better than before.

“Thanks,” Lance awkwardly cleared his throat, all too aware of Keith’s unwavering gaze on him, “for staying, I mean.”

“Yeah,” a smile slowly spread on Keith’s face. “We’re a team, after all.”

Before Lance could respond, the door to the room slid open without warning, causing them both to jump. Hunk stood there in his pajamas, rubbing his eye with one hand and holding a plate of food goo in the other. “Holy crow, I thought the castle was actually haunted again for a moment there. I knew I heard voices in here. What’re you two doing here in the dark?”

“A better question is, what’re _you_ doing wandering the halls? And I knew you were the one stealing food goo in the middle of the night! Coran was chewing the rest of us out instead,” Lance pointed an accusing finger before climbing to his feet, hoping his eyes weren’t still rimmed with red. Keith followed his cue, both of them shuffling out into the hallway.

“Look, I get hungry sometimes, I can’t help it. Besides, it’s kind of hard to sleep when the fate of the universe rests on your shoulders and all that,” Hunk defensively explained as the three set off towards their rooms together.

They reached Hunk’s quarters first, the yellow paladin bidding them a goodnight before disappearing into his room. The remaining two paladins continued down the hall, Lance hesitantly stopping in front of his own door. Keith also paused, looking a bit awkward.

“You know,” Lance hoped what he wanted to say didn’t come off the wrong way, “if you ever want to talk. About your own family or anything, then…I can be a good listener. Which I know is probably surprising and all, but really, I can offer some decent listening services. I do charge by the hour, though, so don’t think it’s free,” his tone was joking, but he was nervously shifting his weight from one foot the other even as he spoke.

Keith blinked a couple of times, and then his face broke into a smile. “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind, then. Thanks, Lance.”

Suddenly flustered, Lance waved a casual hand in the air, activating his door and stepping inside his room. “Also, if you tell anyone else I got a little sentimental, I’ll probably have to kill you. So let’s keep that on the down low, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I figured you’d say that,” Keith still had a grin. “Goodnight, Lance.”

The door slid shut, leaving Lance standing alone in his room, Keith’s footsteps fading down the hall. He underwent his usual nightly ritual of fluffing up his pillow, the image of his family on the forefront of his mind. For some reason, tonight a certain smiling mullet head had joined their ranks. Lance supposed it wasn’t such an awful picture. As soon as his head hit his pillow, his eyes were already shutting on their own.

“Goodnight, Keith.”

With those last whispered words, Lance finally managed to drift off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know much about Keith's backstory yet, but I personally hc that he knew his mother for a short time before she passed away. I'm laughing because even though I'm desperate for these boys to just kiss already, I always seem to write them just pining even more.   
> If you cry about klance a lot, consider screaming at me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/spaceiwa)


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